Perhaps it’s just not my thing but I like expressing myself. That’s a trait I’ve had since i was a child. The medium has never really mattered, as long as it continues my personal expression.

This site ends up getting neglected for other endeavors so this is an apology post but not because I don’t post. I don’t any of you are too worried what I have to say haha. That’s never stopped me. What I am apologizing for is Since launching this site I have unknowingly had the contact form submitting to a personal email address i quit using because it got spammed to death.

So I’m going to correct that and try to respond to the back log of emails I have. Just wanted to say that publicly so nobody thinks they got the cold shoulder. That’s not usually my style.

The post Oops appeared first on David Sparks.

Continuing the theme of real world user interfaces that get on my nerves is targets cash back screen.

Truth be told, the problem isn’t just this screen. As you’ll see when i move things around, the problem isn’t so huge. The problem is actually the process. Once you swipe your card you enter your pin if you use debit. After that you expect to approve the purchase but you’re confronted with this cash back screen.

I consistently find my self thinking I’m done with pushing buttons to see another screen with more buttons that I have to push.

Unfortunately for this post, I didn’t think to take a picture of every screen, just this one. I’ll go ahead and fix this screens slight problems but understand the real issue is setting expectations of what is preceding the current screen as well as organisation.

What I should really do is go back to the drawing board of why these screens started popping up in the first place and then look at how they’re being used now. I’ve never thought the process felt that great and there is definitely room for improvement.

If I’m not mistaken they came on the scene so that credit card users could sign on the screen instead of signing paper that the cashier would have to keep track of. Made the check out process for big box stores move a little faster and saved materials. Then debit cards got popular and punching in your pin is necessary.

I digress. To really tackle this UI/UX correctly I need screen shots of every step and I only have one.

Cash Back Screen:

If you shop at target you’ve seen this screen many times, more times than you probably care to remember because you can’t leave the damn store without spending at least $20 more than you intended but typically well over that mark.

Just as debit, I believe, was added on after credit cards were being used, cash back requests started happening. So this step was added on to make the process easier but also prevent people from getting $50 or more out of the register.

Never the less, if this screen must exist it should at least be easy to navigate and it’s not. the organisation and colors make it hard to quickly understand what your next step should be.

The solution really isn’t too difficult.

On the average most people would be clicking no cash back. So how can that be made easier. Here’s what I cam up with.

A better no cash back screen.

For starters, text on one line. There’s no reason that sentence is broken up into two lines. Here it’s much easier to read.

the cash back buttons are fine in terms of existing and ordering. The problem is that they’re the same color as the no cash back button and in near proximity.

The cancel button is also very strong and your eye is drawn there first due to the contrast issue created by no cash back and getting cash back buttons being the same in appearance.

The cancel button was made smaller to help avoid inadvertent clicks. The text was also changed to “Cancel the Transaction” because cancel in my opinion isn’t specific enough. You’re not certain what you’re going to cancel and the extra texts provides a sense of both expectation and assurance if you need to cancel.

Finally, no cash back was moved to the lower right corner next to cancel because those two buttons are related in that they imply a sense of finality and also have nothing to do with getting a cash back denomination.

What Targets cash back screen could look and feel like.

Just to get a better sense of how this would feel in the real world, here it is mocked up on their device.

Spacing and colors tweaked a bit more.

Grey was added to the cash back denominations to help show the relationship there.

That covers it.

Not too complicated and my changes weren’t drastic. But they are significant when we circle back to why this hardware came on the scene in the first place. It was to save resources and time. Time in the form of getting customers through the line quicker so others didn’t have to wait as long. If this process was optimized or at least the individual screens even more time could be saved for customers in the check out line.

It’s all in the details. Target being such a design centric company, this is a detail they didn’t pay too much attention to.

I’m certain they didn’t build this software or hardware them self but they certainly paid for it and when you realize that their customers last interaction with they have is with this device, you end up wishing they had made the experience better.

Related articles

• Gas Station Pump UI / UX Nightmare. Why Web Guys Should Run The World.

The post Targets Cash Back Screen UI appeared first on David Sparks.

Largely thanks to Apple and other design conscious companies like Target the general public now has solid concepts for what is visually appealing and why that matters. A refined design aesthetic sense used to be reserved for the higher tier of societies who could afford the better designed products. Target leveled that playing field by getting world renowned fashion designers to produce clothes exclusively for their stores. By getting people like Michael Graves to create gorgeous cook ware and other things.

Apple and other companies have aided this progression in design consciousness by stopping at seemingly no extreme to create beautiful hardware and software that works just as well (in my opinion).

The point I’m making is, large portions of the general public now have a decent understanding of what looks good and works well.

Some of those people that are in the general public work at places that build gas station pumps. Yet, we still are forced to use interfaces that are as nightmarish as this:

Now, it’s possible that there could be some complicated outsourcing going on with different companies involved in making the above pictured pump.

But never the less it’s awful.

I’ve long agreed with the Draplin rant of why america is fucked:

Now, Aaron Draplin, one of my favorite designers, is just that. A designer. So his focus is on things like the sign he’s talking about. I have a more complex background where I started as a designer (not a very good one) and then got into development. I now find myself in a roll of Information Architect but I prefer the title “Information Designer” because I feel it’s more close to what I actually do. I spend a lot of time thinking about organization, user flows and tasks, and UI/UX.

So, with all that said, when I see User Interfaces like the gas pump above, I have literally the same reaction as Aaron Draplin. “This is exactly why America is fucked”.

That particular gas station is at the corner of evergreen and poplar. It’s near my apartment in Memphis TN. I go there out of convenience 9 times out of 10. It’s new, clean, easy to get in and out of and close. Been there hundreds of times.

I’m not exaggerating when I say  I have to figure out how to use this UI every single time I go there. I have to search for which debit or credit button to push, where enter is. where yes is etc etc.

On a side note, i see things like this every single day. Some make me more mad than others. It’s my hope that I’ve finally found a use for this blog. A place for me to fix the worlds UI/UX nightmares. So here we go!

Reworking the UI. What’s important?

The first thing on the list of to-do’s here is to figure out what the typical user needs to do with this interface. the flow goes as such:
1) Swipe card. 2) Select credit or debit 3) Enter zip or pin. 4) Want a receipt? 5) Select fuel grade. 6) pump gas and gtfo.

Instead of breaking down the process of where you get tripped up on the pumps UI, I’m just going to go through the changes that I made.

First, the numbers. Whoever made the old pad thought they needed to reinvent the letter to number relationship that phones have been reinforcing for decades. QZ on 1!? whyyyyy!!!!???? No! So, following the phone bad lettering sequence I added the letters to their correct number. After all, I’ve yet to see a need in the UI Flow that would require the letters. Never the less, maybe there’s a process that needs them. So i kept them there, but re-organized.

Second, Clear. Clear makes sense being where it is, but there’s too much focus with the yellow. bar. the insane font size variations make no sense either but whatever. being near the numbers is logical because that’s when it will be needed.

Third, Grouping. The numbers perform one function, the other buttons perform separate individual functions. so I added some spacing between the 2 columns, effectively creating columns, to help the user focus on the task at hand.

Fourth, Remove the clutter… create focus. Someone once said a design is complete when you’ve removed everything that isn’t necessary. Paraphrasing I’m sure. You get the point tho. Somebody please tell me what the fuck “Receipt/yes” is!? Why are there 2 pay inside buttons and why are they green, the same color as the enter button!? Why is help so prominent and cancel out on it’s own?

So you can see some buttons were consolidated and some were removed. There is no need for pay inside cash and pay inside credit. So that became “Pay Inside”.  Debit and Credit were given priority in focus because for most people the process will be as i outlined above. Swipe, debit/credit, number, enter, receipt, pump.

Cancel is effectively another word for No and vise versa. Enter can be understood as a substitute for yes. Both are required tho so the user feels confident in which selection their making. Don’t make them think. They were also made larger than all other buttons for 2 reasons. One, each button serves two functions. “Enter” and “yes”. Two, these are the only buttons that will either almost certainly be used every single time, and sometimes used multiple times. So they needed to be easy to locate and press.

Last, enter was removed from the numbers grouping because it may not always relate to numbers. Help could have filled that space but there was no inherent relation of help to the numbers, it is it’s own function.

Time to add more focus.

Colors imply all sorts of things. The colors from the real pump imply that whoever made it had no idea what the fuck they were doing.

The Green and Red should be obvious. These colors are used in this context in many other instances so that pattern was simply repeated.

Blue is sometimes used by financial institutions but is also used frequently in medical cases. While green can and does mean money, more times than not it’s interpreted as “go”. In this case yes and enter. So blue was Used to connect Debit and Credit as well as a secondary color that could be understood to relate to money in some way.

Put it into production!

Ignore the sloppy photoshop job that was done in a few seconds.

More grouping was added to separate cancel and enter. Pay Inside and Help also relate to debit and credit so that made sense.

Now, look at that… and look at this:

Which one would you rather use?

One takes all the guess work out. One takes concentration every single time you use it.

I spent a few minutes making this. Some company spent months developing this product and the most important part, the part the customer uses, is infuriating.

This, is why web guys should run the world. we know better.

The post Gas Station Pump UI / UX Nightmare. Why Web Guys Should Run The World. appeared first on David Sparks.

I searched far and wide for a good snippets manager. I even wrote an old blog post about two snippets managers.

I wanted an easy way to get snippets in and out of my IDEs, or other places maybe. I liked being able to have notes and things like that but it wasn’t totally a must. I needed to create groups/folders so I could find things quickly.

I had often heard about TextExpander but didn’t want to pay for it, thought I wouldn’t use it much, and didn’t see how it would assist me in any practical way. Turned out to simply be a matter of understanding. I wasn’t quite sure what the app did and how it did it.

My way of using TextExpander may not be the most practical or common use of the app. But it works for me. Not long ago I was talking to another developer friend and mentioned how I have a needed snippet in TextExpander and they responded in a manner that implied they didn’t fully understand why I had my snippets in there. I briefly explained and it occurred to me that maybe I should write a post about this. Perhaps using it the way I am is less common that I thought.

So, hopefully you can find this beneficial in some way.

For the lay person, at it’s simplest explanation, I’m using TextExpander to hold and organize very large and very small snippets of code.

What does TextExpander do exactly?

basically you type a string of characters, configurable a few different ways, and once that string is typed, the text “expands” and turns into the content that you have associated it with in TextExpander.

For example, my favorite and most used snippet is very short. I use CSS borders on all sorts of elements to see exactly what they’re doing during the building and debugging phase. Maybe a topic for another post, but if you’re not using a simple CSS border on elements during the initial development phase you should start. I have done a hand ful of sites that browser tested perfect first try and spent no time fixing issues. I directly attribute that to using borders during the build before anything is broken.

In TextExpander you have 3 elements. The Content, the Label and the Shortcut.

So here’s an example of a snippet I use every single day:

• Content: “border:1px solid red;”
• Label: 1px red border
• Shortcut: “borred” (my abbreviation for border red)

once I’ve typed “borred” it turns into the associated content.

Another I use a lot is a simple case of a background replace on various elements like h1. Any time I need to remove text from an element and show a background image i use the following shortcut.

• Content: ”
  background: left top no-repeat;
  display: block;
  width:px;
  height:px;
  margin:0;
  padding:0;
  text-indent: -9999px;
  “
• Label: “Basic Background Replacement “
• Shortcut: “bgReplace”

As you can probably predict, I type the selector, brackets and then type my shortcut which deliberately has no width and height since those will be specific to each instance and boom. Time saved.

That’s the simple stuff that was obvious to me when I first got the app. Stuff that I was typing over and over. Another is “marpad” which turns into “margin:0; padding:0;”. What I found though was that I could put much longer items in there and then determined that I could group them together logically to aid in speed of use.

So the heavy lifting stuff is my “HTML5 Layout” group. Within that I house various common layouts in both the HTML5 variety as well as their associated CSS. For example. Most every site breaks down by having a header, content area, 1 or 2 sidebars and a footer. Once you create a bare bones browser tested starting point there’s no reason to recode those structures anymore. It may seem illogical to have CSS snippets in the HTML5 Layout folder but I do that to keep them grouped together. I don’t need the other CSS content in any situation than the starting point of building a site. So having it in the CSS folder for semantics makes little sense. It would take longer to find the needed CSS to use with the HTML5 structure if it were in the CSS group, likewise it would make it harder for me to find other things.

Might be important to note at this point, I have so many entries into TextExpander that remembering the shortcuts at this point is near impossible. The things I use every day, I’ve memorized. Like the ones above for example.
What makes this ok is that TextExpander adds an icon to the menu bar that makes looking up items very easy. You can both search or just drill down into the folders if you know where something is.

As you can see, I have many groups organized in a particular way with the most used at the top. Its easy to drill down into a group, click on the needed item and it expands wherever your cursor was in whatever text editor.

Here’s a view of the actual TextExpander app open looking into the HTML5 Layout group.

I think now you may have an idea of how I’m using TextExpander as my snippets manager. If you would like some more details specifically feel free to leave a comment or contact me. I’m happy to help.

With that, I’m going to wrap this up by sharing some ideas for snippets that you can use. It took me a while to think of using the app to this extent so you get to have my trial and error knowledge without the pain. Maybe it’ll lead you to some new ideas and you can come back to share as well.

Here are some snippet ideas.

HTML Tags:

• h1/ = <h1></h1>
• p/ = <p></p>
• em/ = <em></em>
• ul/ = <ul></ul>
• li/ = <li></li>
• a/ = <a href=”” title=””></a>
• ?/ =  <?php ?> (yes i know it’s not html. Thought it would be helpful to include it)

I think you get the idea there.

The trick to making good shortcuts is finding things you wouldn’t normally type. I don’t believe I’ve ever typed “ul/” until using it in TextExpander.

URLs:

• h/ = http://
• h/w = http://www.
• h/goo = http://www.google.com
• h/dav = http://www.davidsparks.me

You see the many uses. I have all URLs that I may need to type on a regular basis. You may be saying “um… thats what bookmarks are for nerd”. Well, I first had this idea when i was sick of typing “http://” in various needs. Once I got to that point i found myself typing “h/w” many times and then following it up with something like this sites URL. Some needs are in comments, often you’ll be asked to list your site. Perhaps a forum, on twitter or tumblr. You start to notice how often you type URLs that aren’t in the address bar.

Email Addresses:

• @pem = Personal EMail
• @wem = Work EMail

I have a hand ful of email addresses that I’m always typing. Typing emails is freaking annoying. I hate having to type the whole “@gmail.com” or whatever. It sucks, it’s a lot to type.

I have shortcuts for CSS, HTML, HTML Emails, Facebook tab development, words I always misspell, HTML5 tags, jQuery, php, javascript etc etc etc.

Hopefully this has provided you with some ideas or a starting point on what you can do with TextExpander as a web developer. I’ve already saved myself 13.5 hours of typing since using it which is quite a lot.

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The post TextExpander for Web Developers, Your Snippets on Steroids appeared first on David Sparks.

It all started many years ago when I was in a signed touring metal band. I was in charge of the merch. After working with a friend in our big brother band who was already established & making t-shirts for other bands & picking his brain on how to design shirts, I tried my first design. Subsequent designs were created & printed. I was hooked & people seemed to like them. I was then requested to make some designs for other bands & venues.

I was hooked & wanted to try & start a clothing line myself. That same friend who did our first initial shirts & helped me out had his own line at the time. It was something that had never occurred to me despite the fact that my band had played with Johnny Cupcakes band, at the venue I used to run with some friends in Memphis TN, & I saw what he was doing when he had first gotten started. Long before what he is today. I even asked him on twitter if he remembered playing there a year or so ago which he said he did. Pretty cool!

I had convinced myself that I was going to start my own line. A friend had a clothing store in town & she had agreed to sell my designs in her store, I just had to get them made. I wanted to start printing them myself & do everything on my own. That’s as far as it went though. I wasn’t in love with my designs & there was somebody that was around me at the time that had discouraged me citing difficulty screen printing, which I had no experience in, & expenses. So I slowly gave up.

Looking back it was for the better I think. The name I was using was probably one of the worst names I could imagine, the designs were cliche, sub par & not that inspiring & if I had failed then, I probably wouldn’t be giving it a go now.

Fast forward a few years & I’m reading various magazines like Computer Arts, trying to teach myself better graphic & web design after getting my first full time web job. In one of the magazines I saw a custom painted Munny. I had no idea what it was, but I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I set out to discover the designer toy scene then proceeded to spend a ridiculous amount of money on it. Slowly but surely the bug started to build up again only this time I wanted to start a toy company. However, some point along the way of researching how to get toys made I started to again get more & more interested in doing shirts. I had decided that shirts were more easily accessible and familiar to me, with already having experience, & that since I wanted to do both, starting off with shirts would be the best option.

The capacity & type of toys I produce is still being debated within my own head. Weather it’s actual vinyl or super limited boutique resin. Toys are in the plans though.

So here I am. Gearing up to launch my first line of shirts. Ducks are still being placed in a row so the exact launch date of the line is still a litte hazy but imminent no less.

I’m very inspired by 1950′s-1960′s advertising & design, typography, character illustration & the NASA space program. The designs will be very minimalist & simple pulling from these inspirations.

I also plan to work with other artists to produce shirts through my line once things get rolling. I’m very excited about my new line & I hope everybody else is too.

I’m considering having a launch party pop up shop somewhere on S. Main at some point on trolly night too.

To wrap this up, I’m throwing a contest where you can win a free shirt from the first line of shirts & there are 4 ways to win.

1. Sign up for the mailing list at Astrobot.co
2. Follow TheAstrobot on Twitter
3. Like TheAstrobot on Facebook (You can also sign up for the mailing list through facebook on the mailing list tab)
4. Follow TheAstrobot on Tumblr.

Doing each of these increases your chances to win. 1 random person will be selected from each of those categories & will receive a free t-shirt! Doesn’t get much easier than that.

The post My New Clothing & Toy Line, Astrobot! appeared first on David Sparks.

One of the things I did for my talk was provide everybody with the PSD file that i personally use when designing a new Twitter background. It has background mock up examples, guides, common resolution demonstrations and a twitter content area to simulate what things will look like live.

I figured others may also find this useful and maybe somebody forgot to write down the full url and hasn’t been able to download it etc. So here it is. If you would like to use the Twitter template I use, have at it!

Twitter Background Design Template PSD

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The post Twitter Background Template PSD appeared first on David Sparks.

The truth is, that isn’t how people are using these services and those people who made those gripes are almost certainly members of Facebook who routinely make ports or spins on those blossoming trendy technologies and they’re now common place. First it was a reworking of their statuses. Then it was a reworking of the feed that looks just like twitter. then pictures and video showed up in your feed and you could check them out without leaving. Now twitter is reworking it’s feed to do the same. Now Places has been created to capitalize on Foursquare though Places has a glaring problem that gives FS an advantage. Places has no badges, specials or mayor ships. No incentives to using the service. To date people just keep using Foursquare and like services with a few exceptions.

Image via CrunchBase

Those same people that complained about those services now see their favorite site adopting those practices.

Geo Location/Tagging is much more interesting though because of the privacy challenges it will face as well as the eventual benefits it will provide when more advances are made.

For me personally, I’m very interested in politics, civil rights, being aware of what your rights are in general as a citizen and protecting them. One of those rights does include privacy however, the Internet has caused us all to rethink what privacy actually means. In ye olden days privacy meant you lived out on a farm a couple hours horse ride into town where nobody could see in your windows. Later it meant nobody could watch you change clothes in a department store dressing room. At the core though privacy has remained the same in 1 way. We as individuals decide what our personal privacy level is. Choice is the key word. Old timers chose to relinquish their privacy when they would ride into town. People chose to relinquish a little privacy when they step out of the dressing room in the new outfit to show a friend or look in the mirror. Today, we chose where we check in. Where and when we broadcast our location. There’s another level though and that’s who we allow that broadcast to be intercepted by which is the purpose of this post.

On facebook we chose who our friends are and within those sometimes we chose to hide certain things from them as well with privacy settings. On twitter you can have a private profile or not sync your foursqare to it. On foursquare you approve or decline friendship requests etc.

Recently I had an automated service retweet my foursqaure post without my approval. That service is locationtweet. Before that, months ago when i first started using foursqaure there was a website that was collecting twitter posts from foursquare and archiving them on their site. Without my permission. I tweeted them telling them that they remove my location tweets permanently because I didn’t grant them permission. They responded quickly letting me know it had been taken down. This twitter account, locationtweet did not respond to my demand to no longer list me in their service.

To me, this is the core of the privacy issue regarding location services and the first thing that needs to be addressed, by whom, I’m not sure. Government, isp, foursquare or twitter them self. I’m not particular about who does it but I absolutely want it to happen. It may seem harmless and insignificant but entertain me.

I broadcast my physical location to the world, but I do so understanding in generalities who can see it. I have a decent understanding of my twitter followers, who i’m friends with on Foursquare and Facebook. Sometimes I check in without sharing with friends. Sometimes I only share it with Foursquare, sometimes just Foursquare and Twitter. The point is I’m in control and every check in is a conscious decision to do so while understanding the conditions.

Services like locationtweet and the other i mentioned exploit this use of technology without the permision or choice of the individual. Their obvious argument is that it’s there for all to see anyway. My response is that yes, all can see it, but i know who all generally is, all aren’t seeing it and their aiding in others seeing it i have no idea about. You’ve likely heard about the pleaserobme.com which now appears to be shut down. The premise was them posting your location implying that you’re not home so go break into my house. I can appreciate the humor in such an effort but it’s also offensive, potentially dangerous and could end up putting some body’s life in danger. Maybe unlikely but all that aside it gets to the core of what I’m talking about. Services should not be allowed or permitted to use my location, my content and the content i generate for services I’m a willing member of for their personal gain without my permission. If foursquare gave them permission to do so, I would look at what they offered and brought to the table. If nothing I would try to opt out and if I couldn’t i would legitimately stop using the service.

Privacy is choice. The conscious decision to share information about yourself and your location. It’s no longer living in your house with the doors and blinds shut. Services that remove my choice from me is an exploit and violation of my privacy and it’s wrong.

There are exciting things in store for location based services. It is the next frontier but something will have to be done on this front to protect our choice in the hopefully near future.

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The post Your Privacy and The Future of Geo Location Services appeared first on David Sparks.

So I’m not sure when this happened, but I just noticed it.

While doing an image search for iPhone Wallpapers I noticed one of my favorite digital artists’, James White‘s images on the page. At first I thought that was really bizarre that google would just happen to show one of my favorite artists stuff in the results. Then I noticed that they added something new. I wasn’t sure how exactly they figured out any kind of connection with James White but upon clicking “My Social Circle” I discovered the quite lengthy answer.

It appears google uses 3 ways to created connections.

1. gChat and Gmail contacts
2. Contacts found through your extended network via google profile. Meaning, I have my facebook and twitter linked to my Google Profile among other sites. It checks for matches through whatever sites i seemingly have listed on my Google Profile and gets relevant content.
3. Other people. Information pulled from other peoples links. So if I pop up in your information and have some pictures on my flickr or blog you might be looking for, there they are.

Quickly scrolling through, it would appear about 80% of my connections are established through my Twitter account while the other 20% is split up between Flickr and my email contacts.

This is pretty interesting and provides for some cool opportunities. If my friend posts a picture I thought was funny and I wanted to find it again, this should make that process MUCH easier. With everybody branching out more and more in terms of how many services their a part of, remembering if my friend posted that lolcat on Facebook, in an email or on Twitter might be unnecessary now. as long as Google knows how many connections I have with that person, it should be able to find the images.

My Social Content.

The other aspect of the new feature is seeing what content you’re providing. A quick look at the links you’ve listed on your google profile and you get a broad picture of where content is coming from. Maybe you want to add some more, maybe you need to take some off. I’ll be adding my Tumblr accounts for sure.

All cool new features that i think are very welcome to most. Should make some aspects of searching a lot easier. And that’s why we use Google in the first place.

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The post Googles New Social Circle in Search Results appeared first on David Sparks.

If you know me, you know I LOVE Wu-Tang Clan. There is one aspect of the band/group that has always driven me crazy though. Their visuals. The album covers and designs have always left me feeling cheated. Like the full experience was never realized. Like they’ve been misunderstood and mishandled this whole time and that they’ve never been told or know any better.

If you know me, you know I LOVE Wu-Tang Clan. There is one aspect of the band/group that has always driven me crazy though. Their visuals. The album covers and designs have always left me feeling cheated. Like the full experience was never realized. Like they’ve been misunderstood and mishandled this whole time and that they’ve never been told or know any better.

I wish they would let me design their album covers. The subject matter they rap about and particularly the eastern aspects like kung fu, shaolin monks, religion, various martial arts references, old movie samples and dialog. Even NYC & Staten Island. The wealth of inspiration to draw from is and always has been endless.  The ability to reinforce their identity established in their lyrics via previously listed subject matter through visual design elements is maybe better than any other group or band i can think of. For sure hip hop. They are more rich with original content than almost anybody else.

I think its one thing that metal, hardcore, punk, rock n roll, indie etc bands have all mastered. Even lame ass hipster bands know they have a look and they reinforce it when they can. MC’s and Rappers live it, look it and breath it just the same. But they seemingly forget or take shortcuts on the design. T.I. for example seems to present at least some semblance of an identity that he’s high class rapping about every day stuff. This is what you get from his CD covers. Jay-Z on the other hand is all over the map.

Rap and Hip Hop have only done this in one way with exceptions and they all do it the same. They also deviate from the path most times. The problem is… not all rap and hip hop is the same. Even though i HATE Kanye hes an exception. Teaming up with Kaws and various artists to create a look that matches what you think his sounds would visualize into. the poppy attitude his tracks have a feeling that is backed up by the attitude of the visuals. When you think Kanye you think about these colors and shapes along side certain songs and hooks.

Tribe called quest had a look and stuck with the the traditional African color pallet.

There is no reason, for a band rich with solid legitimate content like Wu-Tang to have these lame album covers that have no valid relation to them as people, artists or the lyrics. Each one is completely different. They even have what most bands lack. An incredible logo mark that functions perfectly without any accompanying type. I have a Wu-Tang belt buckle on right now. When you see the shape you know its Wu-Tang despite not saying it anywhere. That is so rare for a band to have, and such a luxury I’m not entirely sure I can come up with a good enough example to convey its significance. I’m sure their best selling merchandise consists of the yellow logo on something. Like a black t-shirt. Because fans like their brand. Wu-Tang doesnt seem to know what their sitting on or care too much about their brand outside of the music they create.

As you can see from some of the albums… there’s no real representation of the group in any of them. No visual clues as to what their about. None of them are necessarily bad designs. They’re all just opportunities missed/cop outs. The first one sets the tone for what could have been very interesting. Faceless Urban Ninjas but then the ball is dropped swiftly with the Forever album. I will say my personal taste, that one is bad. the squished image of a hug show, unrelated head shots transformed strange and the pointless globe behind the too large logo.

I may not be the best artist for the job, but i could do better than what they currently have had to date and I understand branding and marketing better than most artists.

While the bellow falls a little short of its potential, like i said. I may not be the best artist for the job. but this is definitely close to what i had in mind. More of a mixture of hip hop/nyc style with eastern traditional style. It’s not incredible by any means, but its better than the above in my opinion simply because you get a feel for what wu-tang represents.

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Many moons ago I ran a website called OurMemphis.net. You can read the history of that site and how it eventually turned into YourMemphis.net on the YourMemphis Back Story page. Since it’s already there I wont go on and on about it here but in short the url holds some sentimental value. Only a few months ago I turned down an offer for the domain name that priced at a couple thousand.

The purpose of YourMemphis is to have a place where anyone can submit ideas on how to make Memphis a better place to live, work, play and raise a family. You can also vote on others ideas as well as comment on them and discuss at length. It’s like Digg for Memphis improvements. The cool thing is you can log in using many of the services you’re already a member of like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Google, WordPress or many others. You sign in with those and it automatically creates you an account on YourMemphis and you’re ready to go! Couldn’t be any easier.

So be sure to go share your ideas on how you would like to improve Memphis. Maybe it’s something you wish Memphis had. More museums, a theme park, something cooler than Bass Pro in the Pyramid etc etc. The List is endless and you can submit every idea you have even if its silly. Then Promote your idea by getting your friends to vote and comment on it.

I can also tell you that important people in the city government are already looking at this and are hoping it can become a useful tool for development so you’re voice will not only be heard, but it’ll be heard by people you want it to be heard by. It’s like the Pepsi Refresh project but exclusive to Memphis. Submit ideas and vote on others.

A great way to encourage discussion on what this city needs as well as letting elected officials know what the public wants, what they don’t want and allowing them an easy way to stay in touch with the community.

So spread the word! Tell your mom ‘n them!

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